The Raven Woman
by h-vic
Summary: Ron wakes up alone in an unfamiliar flat with no recollection of the past week of his life and has to attempt to puzzle out who the woman who clearly slunk away in the night was and what occurred between them.


**Author's Notes:** Written for Electryone82 for the ronpansy_fest on LJ.

The first thing that alerted Ron Weasley to the fact that something was wrong was that he opened his eyes and the room was light. Given that he was fairly sure that it wasn't the weekend and that it was the middle of November, this didn't seem a good sign and rather suggested he might be running very late for work. Far more worrying though was the fact that this clearly wasn't his own flat but he didn't have the slightest concept whose it might be other than that that somebody was clearly female, based on the heavy, myrrhic scent of perfume lingering in the air.

He twisted his head to one side and groaned softly; from the rumpled state of the sheets and the trail of clothes across the floor ending with a black, lace bra, it didn't seem a stretch to assume he knew the woman in question rather well – biblically in fact. Except that he didn't have the foggiest idea who she was and absolutely no recollection of what appeared to have occurred between them, which he rather feared might prove embarrassing when he re-encountered her, not that there was any sign of her presence at the moment – there was utter silence and not just in the bedroom. He wondered if perhaps she had nipped out to get things for breakfast and whether it would be rude to leave before she returned, or even whether his need for breakfast outweighed his embarrassment.

Ron wasn't exactly sure of the correct etiquette in such situations, having not found himself waking up in an unknown woman's flat before. It wasn't really the sort of thing he did; it was more Charlie's style – a drunken, anonymous hookup. Drunkenness appeared the only explanation. Although, Ron realised as he sat up without the contents of his stomach or skull making a bid for freedom, there was no sign of the hangover he really must deserve given he had no recollection of the night before.

He got up and disentangled his boxer shorts from the discarded heap of clothing, before poking his head out of the bedroom door into a fair size living room (oddly enough, a sleeping bag stretched out on the sofa against the wall suggested that alternative sleeping arrangements had originally been planned), which vanished around a corner at the end into what he presumed to be the kitchen. Only two other doors led off the living room. The heavy bolts on one gave it away as a front door, and the other was ajar to reveal the empty, nondescript bathroom beyond. There was clearly nowhere to hide in this flat, and yet his erstwhile hostess was nowhere to be seen.

Something about the flat though seemed strangely sterile; there were no little personal touches to help establish her identity. There were no photos or ornaments. Everything in sight was purely functional, and Ron had a nasty, sneaking suspicion that the woman in question may be a bit of an ice queen based on her surroundings.

"Hello?" he ventured a little hesitantly, but loud enough. He received no reply though – he was definitely alone. Spotting a pot of Floo Powder acting as a bookend to a selection of generically uninspiring books, he decided that a brief conversation with Charlie might provide him with a little enlightenment as to whether to leave now or else hang around (the advantage being that not only was Charlie good with women and would be bound to know how best to respond when the woman returned, but Charlie saw the rest of the family so infrequently that perhaps all of Ron's brothers might not learn about it).

He threw a pinch of the powder into the grate in the corner of the room nearest the bedroom and crouched down to lean his head through.

"Charlie?" he hollered, but the living room of the small flat his brother shared with two other dragon keepers was empty.

"Yeah?" The voice came muffled from another room after a long silence, in a thick Romanian accent. Sergei, Charlie's flatmate, stuck his bearded face around the door.

Ron attempted a smile. "Charlie around?"

"Sorry …" Sergei paused as if searching for a name, clearly struggling to distinguish Ron amongst the other Weasleys he had encountered. He gave up without succeeding, "… Mate. He's out at the Reserve with a sick Welsh Green. Want me to give him a message?"

"No point," Ron muttered and withdrew his head from the grate, hoping the woman hadn't returned in his semi-absence.

"Bugger!" He rocked back on his heels and wondered who else he could get in touch with. He couldn't think of anyone else likely to know how to get out of this ridiculous situation, but despite Harry's lack of experience in the field (or so Ron devoutly hoped given Harry had been seeing Ginny since she left school, and best mate or not, Ron would feel obligated to punch him if he found out that Harry had ever woken up in some strange woman's bed, or Ginny's bed come to that), Harry had always been rather good in a moment of crisis, and Ron thought this certainly constituted a crisis.

So he leant back into the grate again, but as his head appeared in the corner of Harry's kitchen, he was confronted not with Harry but with the last person he could possibly wish to see under the circumstances.

Hermione glanced up from the large book that she was hunched over at the kitchen table, before Ron could beat a hasty retreat.

"Er, Harry not about then?" he asked as nonchalantly as he could manage, given he was talking to his ex-girlfriend whilst kneeling on the floor of some random woman's flat in his boxer shorts.

Clearly, he failed, as Hermione's brow wrinkled in concern. "No," she sad in a tone that implied he ought to have known that. "Is everything all right? You look dreadful."

"Er, yeah, fine … Umm, any idea when he might be back?"

She gave him an even more perplexed, and slightly irritated, look. "Next Friday. He and Ginny are in Portugal." Her tone implied he _really_ ought to know this and that worried him – it seemed that there was more that he didn't remember than just the previous night. "Is there something up with work? Harry said you went off on some mission for Kingsley last week, but he couldn't tell me what, and he hadn't seen you since."

This was really getting quite worrying because no matter how much Ron wracked his brain, he could find no recollection of a secret mission, for Kingsley or otherwise. In fact, the last case he could recall being on at work involved investigating a counterfeiting ring with Harry, which was clearly less recent than yesterday, if Harry was on holiday.

His bewilderment must have shown in his face, because Hermione stood up. "There's obviously something wrong. Shall I just come over and—?"

"No … No … That's not …" Ron stuttered backing away from the grate in panic and trip over his feet, so that as Hermione stepped out of the fireplace she was confronted by the sight of Ron, clad only in his boxers, sprawled on his back on the floor at her feet.

She blushed. "Oops," she muttered. "Sorry, I didn't realise you weren't …" She tailed off as Ron attempted to get to his feet without providing her with any more of a show than he'd already subjected her to. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen it all before of course, but that was water under the bridge as far as both of them were concerned, and they'd been trying their hardest to be friends again, and he didn't think nudity was the way forwards with that aim in mind.

Her eyes travelled beyond him and narrowed as she took in the unfamiliar room and then the dishevelled scene visible through the open bedroom door. "So you found yourself some slut for the night then and were looking to gloat to Harry?" she demanded. "Classy, Ron!"

"Wait!" Ron burst out as she turned to leave. "That's not it at all. I don't know what happened. I don't know where I am, or how I got here."

She paused and shot him a level look over her shoulder. "You got drunk and went home with some trollop. It would hardly be a case worthy of Sherlock Holmes, or even Dixon of Dock Green," she said coldly. He wondered if the Muggle references were a deliberate attempt to exclude and irritate him.

"No, I don't remember _anything._" And he realised the truth of it as he said it. "I don't remember Harry being on holiday, or a mission for Kingsley or anything from the past week at all."

"So what are you suggesting?" Hermione asked, slowly and reluctantly pivoting on her heel to face him. "That you've been Obliviated?"

"I don't know, but it would make sense wouldn't it?"

"Why would someone have Obliviated you?" Hermione sounded genuinely concerned now.

"I don't know. Something to do with whatever I was working on perhaps?"

Hermione's eyes narrowed again. "Do Aurors frequently seduce women in the line of duty then? I wasn't aware that was part of the job."

"Gah! Would you just stop claiming the moral high ground for one bloody minute and help me work out what's actually going on here," Ron snapped stalking into the bedroom to find his trousers and t-shirt.

"Fine!" She mirrored his tone, as she walked into the kitchen, and then screamed. Ron got his feet caught in his trousers in surprise and pitched headfirst into the wardrobe.

"What the bloody hell—" he muttered as he rushed into the kitchen, shoving his t-shirt over his head and trying simultaneously to rub the rapidly developing bruise on his temple.

He froze in the doorway, t-shirt only half pulled down, and attempted to draw a ragged breath which suddenly seemed quite a challenge. "Merlin's fucking, swollen bollocks!"

Hermione stared at him with fear in her eyes. "What the fuck happened here, Ron?"

That, more than anything, scared him; Hermione didn't swear. "I don't … I don't know." He wasn't sure how he managed to force the words out, and his voice sounded unnatural even to him.

The kitchen was a scene of devastation – broken crockery, a shattered window and what looked like a fist-shaped dent in the wall. Far more worrying than any of that though was the blood splattered across the floor and up one wall, almost to the ceiling – too much blood, far too much blood and splashed liberally about in a fashion that hinted at a violent struggle.

"We have to go to the Auror Department," Hermione said and her eyes were distant, almost trance-like as if she didn't really see him anymore. Her back though was rigid and her shoulders square.

"No, please, Hermione," Ron begged her. "I know this looks bad, but I didn't do anything. You know I wouldn't …"

Hermione shook her head as if to dispel the trance and looked at him. "I know; I didn't think you had, but we need to get the Aurors involved; something clearly happened here."

Ron shivered, although there was no breeze in the flat. "Please, Hermione. It really doesn't look good, does it – signs of a woman being here, me with no memory, and _this._" He swept out a hand in illustration. "Just help me work out what happened first."

Hermione watched him for a long moment, and he wasn't sure what she would say – her eyes were blank.

"Okay," she said finally, "Let's see if we can get your memories back at least."

"Thank you."

Hermione didn't reply, but instead pulled out her wand and pointed it at him, murmuring a long incantation he didn't understand. Ron felt the strangest sensation of pressure around his head as if a band were opening and closing, and then with a snapping sensation the pressure eased just a little.

Hermione shook her head a little and looked dazed. "It's not a very strong spell," she said in a familiar didactic tone, "But it is elaborate. I'm not sure I can release it, but I ought to have made it a little 'leaky' at least. Perhaps a few things around here will trigger your memory."

Ron stepped further into the kitchen and crouched down near the largest pool of blood. Something about it didn't quite look right – maybe it was the colour or the shimmer – but it was wrong somehow. It didn't even smell right, and as an Auror, Ron had come to know the smell of blood all too well.

Something glinting in the puddle of blood caught his eye though, distracting him from the wrongness of the blood, and he nudged it with his wand to roll it over. It was a diamond earring, the facets sparkling in the light. As he watched the light play over its surface, something stirred in his mind.

_Candlelight glinted off the diamond twisting below her ear as he leant into kiss her; its purity so much more striking against her raven-black hair._

_She looked so exquisite that he paused and instead leant back to drink in the sight of her. He placed a possessive hand on the milky skin of her waist and trailed a fingertip along her hipbone, before she drew his hand to her lips and kissed it._

Ron could feel the heat flushing to the tips of his ears, and he looked down, playing unnecessarily with the hem of his t-shirt and tucking it into his trousers.

"Did you remember something?" Hermione asked watching his sudden discomfort with interest.

"Er … Not really. Nothing useful. Just, erm, well, a flash really," Ron muttered awkwardly. "She's got dark hair though," he added as an afterthought, realising there was one useful fact to be drawn out from the brief recollection. "And those earrings." He pointed at the blood-soaked diamond. "She was wearing them."

Hermione nodded. "That's a good start, and it shows there are gaps in the Memory Charm now. We just need to find other things to trigger your memory now, but where do we start?"

Something stirred in Ron's mind at her words. "Say that again!"

"All I said was that we need to find the things that will trigger your recollection."

"No, no, not that – 'where do we start.' It sounded familiar."

Hermione looked at him as if he were mad but went along with it. "Where do we start?"

_"Where do we go from here?"_

Hermione stared at him even more perplexed, "I just told you—"

But Ron paid her no heed as the answer crept nearer_. "How do we begin?"_

"Where do we start?

Where do we go from here?

How do we begin?

When all I know is that I need you;

Need you more than you could ever know

I could be your raven woman."

_The words echoed through the smoky haze of the club in her deep, throaty contralto, but Ron was unimpressed as he sat at a table below the lip of the stage, glass of water in his hand as he couldn't drink on duty, as much as that seemed the only way he might make it though this all still somewhat sane. He couldn't believe his bad luck to get this assignment – he'd bet that half the other Aurors would think it glamorous and enviable, but he couldn't think of anything worse than acting as babysitter to some silly, minor celebrity overreacting to a few unpleasant letters, especially when the Wizarding Wireless star in question was a selfish, demanding Slytherin whom he had hated and yet harboured a secret crush on at school._

_"Thank you; thank you very much." Pansy Parkinson stood up to leave her adoring crowd, and Ron steeled himself to follow her and get this over with. He walked up to the doorman guarding the backstage area, and flashed his Auror's badge so that in moments he was standing outside Pansy's changing room door, hand poised to knock._

_"Miss Parkinson," he greeted her cordially when she opened the door._

_"What are you dong here, Weasel?" she demanded in a single irritated breath. "How lax is security in this wretched place anyway?" She made to close the door, but Ron jammed his foot in the way._

_"I'm here from the Auror Department, Miss Parkinson," Ron said through tightly gritted teeth. "I understand you've been receiving some threatening letters?"_

_"Merlin! They could have at least sent me a real Auror, not some wet-behind-the-ears brat. But yes, I've been getting death threats."_

_Ron drew a very deep breath to allow him to forbear from mentioning that she was no older than he. "Perhaps I could come in, Miss Parkinson? Discussing this in the corridor isn't ideal from a security perspective."_

_"Yeah, fine, whatever," she muttered dismissively stepping away from the door and reseating herself at the mirror in the corner, picking up a cotton pad and a bottle of something pale blue and fragrant. "And cut the 'Miss Parkinson' crap. No one but my bank manager calls me that."_

_"Okay, _Pansy," _Ron shot back, laying deliberate emphasis on the name, and helping himself to a seat. "We've had a look at the letters you've been receiving, and they're pretty nasty__—__"_

_"Oh, and to think people dare to question the observation skills of Aurors!" Pansy cut in. "Of course they're bloody nasty; I wouldn't have bothered calling you in if they weren't, but I'd say someone threatening to slice me up in graphic detail counts as pretty bloody unfriendly!"_

_"Quite," Ron said, reining his temper onto its tightest leash. "As I was saying, they are nasty." He put up a hand to silence any further snide remarks. "And we are inclined to think they are meant in all seriousness too." Pansy gave a delicate shiver, and paled a little, her bravado failing. "That's why I'm here – to take you to a safehouse where we can protect you until we work out who's behind this."_

_Pansy's fighting spirit returned in full force. "You mean I'm going to be locked up in some grotty, little hovel with you, until your idiotic colleagues can bumble their way to a solution? Just bloody fabulous!"_

_Finally, Ron's temper could take no more. "Do you really think I'm relishing this prospect any more than you, Parkinson, being lumbered with looking after some arrogant prima donna? I didn't want this bloody assignment, but we're both stuck with it, so we're just going to have to find a way to deal with it."_

"Aren't those the lyrics to that new Pansy Parkinson song?" Hermione asked.

Ron nodded. "Yeah, I think that might have been the mission Harry mentioned – she was receiving death threats."

"What else do you remember?" Hermione asked eagerly.

Ron shook his head. "Nothing; just that. I think I was assigned to look after her in some safehouse."

"Here?"

"I don't know," Ron muttered in frustration.

"Was she the woman here?" Hermione asked. Her eyes narrowed a little as she recalled the evidence of how Pansy and Ron had clearly been passing the time. Ron blushed.

"She could be. What happened to her then though?" Both of their eyes travelled to the blood on the floor, and Hermione paled.

"Do you think maybe whoever sent the death threats caught up with her?" Hermione asked slowly.

"Let's keep looking," Ron suggested, unwilling to consider that possibility for now.

Hermione nodded and pulled open the fridge. "What's that?" she asked in surprise.

Ron peered over her shoulder at the container of yellowish liquid that was shoved in the door. "Peruvian llama's milk," he replied without pausing to wonder how he knew, or why it made him grit his teeth in irritation.

_"Peruvian llama's milk?" Ron exclaimed staring at the scribbled list in his hand. "You know, when I asked what you needed, I meant essentials like toothpaste!"_

_"Oh, but it is essential," Pansy corrected him. "It's so good for the skin, and you hustled me here with no time to pack anything at all_."

_"And where the hell am I supposed to get that?"_

_"Try Peru," Pansy suggested with an infuriating smirk._

"Really?" Hermione demanded with a laugh. "Somewhat of a demanding houseguest was she?"

"It would seem so," Ron muttered grimly, and wondered how, if this was as irritating as Pansy was, he had seemingly ended up on more intimate terms with her. Right now, the only reason he could see that he would have wanted his hands on her was to strangle her.

Hermione wandered out of the kitchen, and Ron followed her, pausing again to crouch by the pool of blood, something about which still bothered him. It seemed browner than it ought to, even though it had partially dried, and the smell seemed even more metallic than he expected. The smell seemed to remind him of something, but it didn't surface, as his recollections of Pansy had been. He wondered if perhaps this were an older, unconnected memory, subject only to the vague, associative nature of recall rather than the victim of a charm. Shaking his head a little to clear his thoughts, he wandered out into the living room, where Hermione was poking around the shelves.

Shoving the sleeping bag out of the way, Ron collapsed onto the sofa and stared moodily at the other sofa.

_Ron sat in the dimly lit room, staring at Pansy's silhouette stretched out on the opposite sofa. He didn't have the heart to wake her, not now that she had finally found some peace._

_There had been another letter, threatening her family this time, and at one stage Ron had had to physically restrain her from leaving. She had collapsed sobbing in his restraining arms eventually, and somehow confinement had segued into an awkwardly comforting embrace. He'd promised that they'd send an Auror straight over to her parents and even station one at Hogwarts to keep an eye on her little brother, and she'd relaxed a little._

_Then after days of silence and snide taunts, she'd talked, really talked, the words pouring from her. A strange confidence developed between them as she talked about the pressures of fame and of the vague, dark regrets from her past that the threats felt like punishment for and which she dreaded catching up with her one day. She didn't elaborate on those, and he didn't ask – he was just starting to warm to her and a Slytherin's dark secrets seemed like something to break the fragile accord forming._

_As he watched her sleep now, for the first time, he didn't see an inconvenience, or a selfish diva, but a scared and very human woman._

_Ever so carefully, so as not to wake her, he scooped her limp form up in his arms and carried her through to the bedroom, laying her gently on the bed, and pausing at the doorway for one last look at her, before retiring to the sleeping bag on the sofa._

"She was scared," Ron said quietly. "Really scared. If they've got her, Hermione, it's bad." He was surprised by the depth of his concern

Hermione murmured something that might have been agreement and continued her systematic perusal of the shelves.

"This seems out of place somehow," she said finally, turning around with an inky black, raven's feather quill in her hands. "There's nothing else remotely personal here, but this isn't something I'd expect the Auror Department to keep in a safehouse." She walked over and handed the quill to him. "Does it mean anything to you?"

_"What the hell were you playing at? Are you mad?" Ron bellowed at her._

_Pansy had been pale and drawn, the fear of her near miss clouding her eyes, but his anger seemed to galvanise her. "What fucking business is it of yours, Weasley?" she spat at him. "You're not my keeper!"_

_"No, but I'm bloody well supposed to be keeping you safe. It's my arse on the damn line if you get yourself killed!" He didn't dare admit he was developing a more personal interest in her continued well-being._

_"I'll remember that, shall I, the next time there's a Killing Curse shattering the brickwork against my head – I can't get myself killed because it's your arse on the line?" Her voice was shrill with mockery, and her eyes were little more than vicious slits._

_"Well, if you hadn't snuck out whilst I was asleep like some sort of teenaged delinquent, you wouldn't have gotten yourself into that situation in the first bloody place. I hope it was sodding well worth it!" Ron grabbed the bag that she had returned clutching out from her hand and wrenched it open._

_"Give that back, you bastard! You have no right__—__"_

_"A quill? You almost got yourself killed for a fucking quill? He pulled the offending article from the bag and waved it at her. She snatched it away._

_"It's for my brother, if you must know. It's his birthday and I can't even speak to him; I wanted to get him something__—__"_

_"You could have died!" He stepped closer to her, well inside her personal space now. Her presence filled his senses and his voice drowned out the thunder of his own pulse in his ears. "You could have fucking well gotten yourself killed, you stupid cow!"_

_And with that he kissed her._

_It wasn't gentle; it was desperate and full of need and passion and fear, and she clung to him like a drowning woman, throwing her arms around his neck and moulding herself to the long, lanky lines of him_.

"Er … Erm … Yeah, it's hers – Pansy's I mean," Ron stuttered, blushing furiously to the tips of his ears. "It was a gift for her brother. I'll … erm … make sure he gets it."

He took the quill from her, and as his fingers closed around it the scent of the feather brought the briefest flash of an old memory of helping Hagrid tend a wounded Hippogryff. Suddenly, he understood his confusion about the blood in the kitchen – it wasn't Pansy's, it couldn't be; it was Hippogryff blood. He wasn't sure what to make of that revelation, so he said nothing to Hermione, just for now, until he puzzled out the why of the situation.

Slightly afraid of what would surface in his mind next, and more than a little hot under the collar already, Ron wandered into the bedroom, ostensibly in search of more clues, but more to put his back and a little distance between himself and Hermione. As soon as his eyes alighted on the rumpled bed though, he knew it was a mistake.

_Pansy curled against his side, her head resting on his bare chest._

_"Don't you ever just want to escape?" she asked, her fingers tracing lazy circles on his stomach._

_Ron lifted his head a little to stare down at her. "Escape?" he echoed. "What do you mean?"_

_"Well, just walk away from it all to where no one knows you so you can start afresh as someone new? Get away from the past?"_

_"No, I guess I don't," he said slowly. "I sort of like my life and the people in it."_

_"Shame," Pansy whispered, her breath hot on his skin._

Now it made sense to Ron – the Memory Charm, the phony abduction scene, the odd sense of unease. She'd faked it, and yet he couldn't bring himself to turn her in he realised instantly. No matter what her past held that she was running from, he couldn't bring himself to destroy her carefully contrived plan.

"Thanks, Hermione," he said instead, walking back into the living room. "I think I've got it mostly sorted now – I was babysitting Parkinson and she got abducted, presumably by those responsible for the threats, during the night. I should get a report into the Auror Department – the less time she's been missing, the more chance of finding her, so they'll need to get a search team out as soon as they can."

Before Hermione had any chance to object, Ron had hustled her back through the Floo, with yet another round of thanks.

Several hours later, Ron tilted his head back under the searing water of the shower and sighed. It had been such a bureaucratically frustrating few hours of form-filling and studiously suggesting to his colleagues all the places that Pansy almost certainly would not be. He wondered what it was about her that left him willing to lie in such a barefaced manner, and be silently complicit in helping her run from whatever it was that she needed to run away from enough to fake her own abduction. It was career suicide if anyone ever found out, all for a woman who could have nothing to do with him in her new life.

As he stepped out of the shower though, he noticed a message outlined in the steam coating the mirror:

"Missing _you already. Meet me on the steps of St Paul's at midday tomorrow."_


End file.
